I don't know if many of you looked around during the pandemic and think, "I have never done kid's ministry this way before." We were planning VBS and one minute, we weren't because everyone was staying home. I was teaching kiddos on Zoom for Bible Study, and delivering books for several students to finish Awana. It was rough the first couple of weeks. I actually remember crying in staff meeting at church because I wanted to be able to live my life and go to Target. (I love that place!) When I realized it was going to be a while before things got back to normal, I knew I had to do some different things in order to reach the kids in our community.
Here are some things I did during the pandemic that worked for my church that you can use too now to reach kids and be intentional in ministry:
Summer Bucket Challenge - Instead of VBS, we made these huge buckets of goodies, a family Bible study, and a note of encouragement to parents and kiddos to study God's word. It was awesome! The kiddos loved them and people still are using the things that we gave them.
Gnomes! - We moved around these huge cutouts of gnomes around to everyone's house. We had a cute sign that said, "You have been gnomed!" and I wrote them a letter of encouragement and let kiddos know how much we missed them.
Remember Social Media is your friend - Posted prompts of ideas to get kids moving and thinking and it helped parents while kiddos were going stir-crazy.
Drive Thru Everything! - We did drive thru Fall festival, Awana Awards, and even gave materials to parents as they drove up for Sundays. We even made Easter things available for drive thru. It was awesome to connect with our people, even with a facemask.
Zoom everything - kids were more willing to get on Zoom when we had a prompt and a gift. We gave out a gift card to our local Mexican food restaurant and called it "Taco Tuesday" and at the end I would pick a winner (a different winner each week). It was so much fun!
We used it as a time to make our volunteers feel loved - I delivered all our volunteers gifts and said thank you to them for all they do. Make your people feel special no matter what because they will know they matter and are needed.
Call your people - check on them, see if they need anything. Some of my best ministry were just shooting the breeze with parents and hearing their hearts.
Did y'all do anything that worked for you? Let me know because I would love more ideas!